Speech Therapy: Session 2

Last week was the second session of speech therapy and I must admit, I didn’t come away quite as enthusiastic as the previous week. That week all the suggestions were to try things we hadn’t done before, whereas this week initially I came away thinking, “But we already do that!” So I couldn’t see how it could possibly make a difference.

The main lesson this week was to talk less in sentences and start using individual words. For example rather than saying, “Oh look at that cat over there” – simply point and clearly say “Cat”.

The logic is that it’s far easier to get him to copy individual words than whole sentences, and once he starts copying individual words we can work on building things up from there.

But I could recall countless examples of us doing just that, in the car pointing out animals in the fields and saying “Horse…. Cow….etc.” Or walking up the hill and pointing out “Aeroplane” or “Bus”. I was certain we were already doing it and my hope for the therapy working started to evaporate.

But once home and with the session fresh in my mind, I became more aware of our interactions, and it surprised me to find I actually do an awful lot less of this than I thought. In fact it was rare. We certainly used to do it. But then as he grew it became obvious that he understood what all the words meant, and so we started talking to him more in sentences, which he also clearly understood so we carried on from there.

Without me noticing, we now talk to him almost entirely in sentences. In fact we only really use single words for something new, to teach him the word. Once he understands it, it’s quickly incorporated into a sentence.

But it isn’t just about understanding. It’s about copying.

So now we’re going back to basics and using single words far more often. It feels pretty weird and actually it’s quite hard work.

I’m still a little dubious about it working because Taters doesn’t really go in for copying sounds – he doesn’t copy animal sounds for example, although he does make engine noises when he plays with cars and just recently he pretends to snore which he copied from my mum, so maybe he’s come round to that. But I’m still worried it’s not going to work. He’s just not much of a copier.

Taters is really enjoying our visits to the therapist though, which is great. And he’s making new sounds all the time, some even sound like attempts to talk so perhaps this is working more than I realise. His sleep has also suddenly become disrupted again and I’m wondering if it’s because he’s trying to get his little head around all this?

It just worries me that we’re now half way through the sessions and although I know it’s more about equipping us with the skills to help him learn, I worry four sessions is nowhere near enough. I hoped she’d do some more one-on-one with him. Maybe I secretly hoped for a miracle too?

So there it is, obviously I’m still committed to this and will give it my all, but I’m just not that confident it will work.